


twin size mattress

by jolt



Series: drop a heart, break a name [3]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bands, M/M, More of the Pop Punk AU because I will be a slave to it forever, Willy has a lot of Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 09:08:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14445984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolt/pseuds/jolt
Summary: Willy is, without a doubt, the biggest idiot on the face of the planet.(Or, Willy falls for his tour manager.)





	twin size mattress

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS TOTALLY AND ABSOLUTELY A WORK OF FICTION.
> 
> Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Nope, it's me, writing more of the Pop Punk AU because why the heck not? If you read the last instalment and noticed hints of Zach/Willy, this one's for you! Also, if you haven't read the previous instalments of this AU, I now invite you to do so! There are lots of dumb boys touring around in punk bands and falling in love!
> 
> Title is from Twin Size Mattress by The Front Bottoms, because I’ve been listening to it a lot lately, and the line _this is for the lions living in the wiry, broke-down frames of my friends’ bodies_ is particularly evocative and relevant.

 

Willy is, without a doubt, the biggest idiot on the face of the planet.

 

***

  
For what has to be the seventh time on this goddamn tour, Willy wakes up in Zach’s bunk.

For what has to be the seventh time on this goddamn tour, Willy wakes up alone in Zach’s bunk.  
  
Willy stirs and stretches, wiggling so his spine pops, and then he blows a kiss to the picture of Zach’s parents tacked to the wall of the bunk.  
  
“Morning, Mama Hyman, Poppa Hyman,” he says.  
  
He peels back the curtain, carefully peering at both ends of the bus, looking for signs of life. The back lounge is clear. The front, as far as he can tell, is as well. Willy feels around the bunk for something to toss across the lane into Stromer’s bunk. He settles for Zach’s Leafs teddy bear, satisfied when his lob makes contact, and Dylan grumbles something incoherent.  
  
Willy feels much more like a human person, and not someone comprised of a hundred thousand different confusing emotions, when he’s annoying Dylan. He spends another minute locating his pants —

(shoved down to the bottom corner of the bunk in an unceremonious pile)  
  
before climbing down.  
  
Zach’s in the front, after all, on the phone. He’s got two coffees on the table in front of him, and he motions to one of them when Willy wanders in. It’s the strange kind of… _gesture_ that Willy is still figuring out how to react to. The line between tour manager kindness and eleven-time hookup kindness that Willy finds himself actively straddling these days. He sits at the kitchenette bench, anyway, and sips the coffee quietly, reveling in the sound of Zach’s deep voice.  
  
“Great, thanks. I’ll let you know by tomorrow,” Zach says, hanging up. He looks up at Willy from across the table. “Morning.”  
  
Willy would love to address his recent pattern of behavior and tackle his problems head-on, he honestly would, but —  
  
“Sup,” he says instead.  
  
“Prepping for the summer,” Zach answers. His focus on the laptop in front of him is unwavering, but he casts another quick glance at Willy. Willy doesn’t expect to catch him looking, even if it’s just for a millisecond, because the Zach’s been pretty good about avoiding Willy’s eyes lately. “You guys are gonna be busy.”  
  
“If we’re busy, you’re busy,” Willy answers, if only to fill the air with something other than his absolute _traitor_ of a heart, beating so loud the entire state of Ohio probably hears it.  
  
“That’s generally how it works,” Zach replies wryly. His version of filling the air with something means just typing at an alarming pace, keys clacking in an unsteady rhythm.  
  
Luckily, the other guys must subconsciously sense the painfully awkward yet lovely tableau of morning domesticity they’ve created, and filter out of their bunks and into the bus’ common space. Mitch emerges from his bunk first, wearing a hoodie that’s several sizes too big, and plucks the coffee mug from Willy’s hands without so much as a word.  
  
“Morning to you too,” Willy scoffs.  
  
Mitch grunts in response. His hair sticks out at thirty different misplaced angles, and he sits on the couch, curling in on himself. Mo’s next, and he hums while making himself cereal. Then it’s Brownie, who’s far too chipper than anyone should be before nine.  
  
“What city are we in?” Dylan shouts from the back.  
  
“Cincinnati!” Zach, Willy, and Mitch shout back in unison. Though Willy wouldn’t be surprised if Dylan already knew the answer and was just asking for the theatrics of it, because —  
  
“You know what _that_ means!” Dylan shrieks, as he crosses the length of the bus in three bounds. He doesn’t wait for a response before saying, “I get to see Davo tonight!”  
  
Dylan acting like a love-sick teenager at the thought of seeing Connor is at once hilarious, gratifying, and the scariest thing Willy’s ever experienced first-hand.

Mo wastes no time in hitting Dylan on the head with a rolled-up magazine. “You’re not the only one seeing a long distance boyfriend,” he scolds, gesturing at Mitch. “Have some consideration.”  
  
Willy thinks sometimes that if Zach keeps everybody in order, then Mo keeps everyone humble.

“My bad, my bad,” Dylan answers, not even reacting to the dog discipline Mo just inflicted on him, “ _Mitchy and I_ are getting laid tonight!” He amends, and Mitch leans over to give him a fist bump.  
  
“You know, guys, as much as we love keeping track of your bone schedule, please stop.” Brownie groans.

That leads to the guys engaging in a back-and-forth about the concept of _bone schedules_. Normally, Willy would be the first one in on that, because chirping his best friends ranks among one of his top four favourite activities. Today, though, he finds himself keeping quiet, because Zach’s nose is still buried in his laptop and his shoulders are an awful, rigid line. Willy just takes his coffee back from a much more lucid Mitch, instead, and watches his friends’ madness unfold before him.

 

***

 

The first time it happened, the world slowed to a crawling pace, turned to Willy, and _invited_ him to kiss Zach, sugar sweet, until they were both pink in the face. It looked at him and said _you want this, and you can_ have _it_ . The universe fucking conspired for it to happen. Willy’s absolutely certain of that. He’s even more certain that, as they clumsily made out against the cold, grimy metal of the tour bus, he was totally done for. Because Zach’s hands gripping his waist had been firm and sure, in a way that was just so _Zach_ that Willy nearly cried out.

The second time it happened, it shouldn’t have happened, logically. Willy had spent his whole night trying _not_ to think about Zach by throwing himself at anything that moved in the bar. Brownie grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and forced him to choke down two bottles of water before sending him back to the bus. The bus that Zach was already on, lying in his bunk, because of course he’d be responsible enough to go to bed before one AM. Willy had crawled into the bunk without a word, and Zach had let him. And Zach pet his hair, and Willy allowed himself to graze the exposed strip of skin between Zach’s rucked up t-shirt and his sweats with his fingertips, but only for a moment.

The fifth time it happened, Willy blew Zach in the back lounge.

The seventh time it happened, Zach slid their hips together, and they pressed into each other desperately, like kids do, until they were gasping for air. That was last night.

And that’s not even counting the four other times before this tour started.

Willy’s been a goner from the get-go. He’s someone who craves stability, is desperate for guidance. He loves his crazy life, but he’s so _thankful_ to have a tether, a core beyond just playing music and getting bananas wasted every night. Zach’s that force for him, and it’s as immovable and beautiful as Willy thought was possible. And not that Willy has, like, a _kink_ for being told what to do and being kept in check, but…

Well, he probably does, now that he thinks about it.

 

***

 

Willy likes The Soundless Deep. They’re cool guys, and Will’s glad that of all possible bands, his friends have decided to fall in love with half of this one. He doesn’t mind that their lives have all become inextricably linked, woven together at any given opportunity, and making plans to meet up whenever possible.

They all decide to have reunion drinks after their respective shows, and all wind up on TSD’s bus later that night. It’s easy, all of them together, drinking cheap beer and coming down from the high of performing.

Willy hates being envious of his best friends, but it’s like clockwork, the way Auston’s arm winds around Mitch’s slight shoulders, or the way Connor slides onto Dylan’s lap so effortlessly. It’s inevitable, and kind of beautiful, and Willy just doesn’t know if that kind of ease will ever come to him. It certainly hasn’t with Zach. Not yet, anyway.  
  
Willy’s reverie is broken, unsurprisingly, but the shrieks of an indignant Mitch.

“Did _not_!”

“That is such a _lie_ , I can’t believe you’re _lying right to my face_!”

“I’m honestly with Stromer on this one. There’s no way that’s the truth — ”

“ _Connor McDavid, I am_ not _lying_ ,” Mitch shouts, abandoning his spot next to Auston to tackle Connor and Dylan simultaneously on the couch, “I would _never_ have intentionally killed Dylan’s fish. I’m not a _monster_.”

“All _I’m_ saying is Mikey McLeod _saw_ you try to recreate _Finding Nemo_ — ”

They keep shouting at each other for another five minutes before they all seem to plateau, and consequently dissolve into a pile of high-pitched, uncontrollable laughter.

And that’s still taking some getting used to — seeing Dylan smile so freely, with such abandon. Seeing him so clearly happy, when he wasn’t, for so long. They work, Willy decides. Dylan, Mitch, and Connor. They make _sense_ as a trio, and as much as Willy actively avoids self-pity, there are times where it’s just impossible to ignore the fact that he was just a replacement. He particularly hates that his psyche is guiding him down that avenue tonight, because he knows that he, Mitchy, and Dylan _also_ make sense as a trio. Besides, they’ve given each other so much of themselves it’s pretty absurd to think they’re anything less than brothers, at this point.

As if on queue, Zach’s hand lands on his shoulder, and it’s startling in its weight. Admittedly, that’s kind of Zach’s _thing_ — being their support, steadying them, reining them in when they fly too far off course.  
  
“You guys are going back to the studio soon, eh?” Zach asks, even though he knows their schedule inside out and backwards.  
  
Willy nods.  
  
“Dyls was showing me some of the songs,” Zach continues, “they’re gonna be amazing.”  
  
“We’ll see,” Willy replies, and it’s not like he enjoys being standoffish, but he feels like he’s astral projecting into another dimension and it’s going to take a while for his body to catch up with his brain.  
  
Zach persists. “He played _Cardiac Arrest_ for me. Your solo sounds dope.”  
  
Willy waves him off. “It’s just a demo. It’ll sound better with production.”  
  
“I dunno, you wouldn’t want to over-produce something so delicate like that.”  
  
Willy finally turns his attention away from the golden trio on the couch to face Zach head-on.  
  
“It’s not gonna be over-produced. Come on, Zachy, you know that’s not our thing. And if we kept it a demo, it would sound _too_ raw. It would be like a step back and — ”  
  
Zach’s grinning at him, patient and tricky, and somehow always able to draw Willy out of his own head. If Zach is inhumanly good at his job, that’s pretty much a given. Zach is inhumanly good at almost everything. Willy grins right back at him, and it feels like his first easy smile all day.

 

***

 

They’ve got a twelve hour drive ahead of them tonight, which means they’ve got a curfew. It therefore means there’s a cap to how much drinking and boning Mitch and Dylan can respectively engage in. Willy’s forced to carry both their aching hearts back to the bus on time, in the interest of avoiding the very real threat of Zach’s anal-retentive wrath. Mitch insists on a piggyback ride, but Dylan opts to sway slowly behind them, spewing ridiculous, philosophical thoughts as he goes.

“You and your self-destructive pattern of behavior,” he’s saying to Willy, slurring like a motherfucker and completely incapable of standing up straight.  
  
Willy turns to shove him just hard enough to throw off his equilibrium. “That’s your thing, not mine.”  
  
“Not anymore. Now I’m in love,” Dylan protests.  
  
“You’ve always been in love with Connor, though,” Willy says, not unkindly, as he guides them back onto the bus.  
  
“ _Rude_.”

“ _Accurate_ .” Mitch counters. Game set match. Dylan flops face-first onto the couch in the front lounge.  
  
“So Willy, when are you and Zach getting married and having thousands of blond children?”

Willy always seems to forget how tactless Dylan is when he’s this drunk. He scoffs. “Probably never,”

“You guys _suck_ . Don’t think I don’t know what you...don’t do — _do do_? Eh, I give up.” Dylan answers. Willy hands him a bottle of Gatorade. “You have to just go up to Zach and tell him you _love him_ ,”  
  
“You know, talking is a good thing,” Mitch says. “Also, Zach is terrible at hiding his feelings.”  
  
“He’s kind of like Dyls in that sense,” Willy chirps. His heart’s barely in it, but he still grins when it gets a rise out of Dylan.

“You’re so _mean_ ,” Dylan whines, face still mashed into the couch cushions. “Why do I even _love you_?”

Willy squeezes his ankle. “Because my charm is irresistible to mortals.”  
  
Despite his earlier self-pity, Willy knows they have his back. And he gives them a lot of crap, and they give it right back, but they love each other. And Willy supposes that forcefully suggesting he confront Zach is probably part of that.

 

***

 

There’s a nice symmetry to finding Zach puttering around the back lounge. He was the first up and now he’s the last one showing any real sign of life tonight. Willy tries not to dwell on the sizeable differences in their general manners of conducting themselves. Because Willy never gives less than 100%, whether he’s onstage or quietly watching the potential love of his life from the doorway. Zach knows absolutely everything there is to know about Willy. Both in the damage-control sense, and in all the times Willy’s spilled his guts to him on the road. The drunken confessions, worries, hopes, dreams, fears, and every single ache and pain. The moments of extreme intimacy brought on by tour. The admittedly necessary manhandling. And Zach’s never once made him feel rejected, or alone, or inadequate.

(He’s made him feel like an idiot, but only because of how hopelessly dumb Willy is in the face of Zach’s genius— )

Not to mention Zach’s also seen him naked more often that anyone else in his life, platonic or otherwise, even before they started doing... whatever it is they’re doing. This is the kind of take-me-or-leave-me ultimatum that feels pretty fair, all things considered. It’s terrifying, because, yeah, Zach’s seen Willy at his worst, at his darkest, at his most utterly hopeless, but. He still let Willy crawl in to his bunk last night, so what does that say about _him_ , exactly?

“Are we ever going to...talk?” Willy asks, fidgeting. He sits down on the couch and tips his head back to gaze at the multicoloured lights illuminating the ceiling in technicolour.

The highway whips past them outside. There’s a streetlight every few feet, but it all disappears into a blur of light and speed and quiet, quiet sound. Sometimes, Willy thinks about all the anonymous people in the anonymous towns they pass every night while coasting across the country. He thinks about the lives they lead, the jobs they wake up to go to every morning. He wonders if any of them have ever been in love with someone with not a clue what to do about it.

“What do you want to talk about?” Zach asks, and oh, _that’s_ how it’s gonna be, Hyman? He’s gonna make Willy do all the heaving fucking emotional lifting. So be it.

“What are we doing?” Willy counters. He keeps his gaze on the string of multicoloured lights hanging above their heads. Neutral. “Oh, and please don’t say _we’re sitting in the lounge, Will_ , because it’s honestly taken me, like, a bajillion years to work up the nerve to ask you this—just talk to Mitch— so I think the least you could do is cut me some slack —  ”

Zach laughs. “Okay, Willy, I won’t say that,”

“Good.”

It’s Zach’s turn to fidget. “So, we’ve hooked up eleven times. Which is, um, a good number. Eleven is solid. It’s one more than ten, and —  ”

Willy feels, like, an unreasonable amount of relief that he wasn’t the only one keeping track. But that’s Zach, he figures, always on top of the most minute details, always steering their giant, messy ship. He’s also endeared by Zach’s stumbling, because he sounds about as nervous as Willy feels.

“Do you… are you, like, looking for — ”

“I don’t want to see other people,” Willy says immediately. When Zach just looks at him skeptically, he chews his bottom lip for a second.  
  
“You don’t? Why?” Zach asks, and he has the nerve to sound surprised.  
  
“I don’t, because...” Willy starts, searching his brain for a way to phrase it delicately, “Because I’ve probably been in love with you for a year now. At least.”  
  
“That’s — probably a good reason.” Zach answers.  
  
“Yeah,” Willy says, “it’s kind of a thing.”

“I’d say,” Zach replies, and he seems to be taking his time processing what Willy just said. “So. Date me?”

Willy’s head snaps up. Zach’s smiling, sheepish, so boyishly handsome that Willy wishes he had a fraction of sense, that he knew where to begin, because all he wants to do is smash this moment into his chest and hold onto it forever. And Willy wants to _laugh_ , because he tasted Zach’s come in this exact spot on the bus, but he keeps that to himself. Zach already knows it, besides.

“Alright, Zachy, I’ll date you.”

Then Willy’s head tips over to lean on Zach’s shoulder, and Zach slips his fingers through Willy’s. Almost like clockwork.

 

***

 

That night, Willy falls asleep in Zach’s bunk, for what has to be the eight time on this goddamn tour.

But, for the very first time, he doesn’t wake up alone.

**Author's Note:**

> The pacing in this isn’t perfect, but I wanted to write some Zach/Willy, since I kind of hinted it at it in the previous instalment of this au. Also, I will cling to absolutely any excuse to write about my boys in punk bands. I apologize if Willy seems kind of uncharacteristically dark, but I enjoyed writing this perspective. I imagine the strain of being tired, on the road, and struggling with feelings is enough to give anyone a darker inner monologue. 
> 
> Comments are my lifeblood!
> 
> Also, [writing blog](https://oldjolt.tumblr.com).


End file.
